Phaedrus
when they came to letters, This, said Theuth, will make the Egyptians
wiser and give them better memories; it is a specific both for the
memory and for the wit. Thamus replied: O most ingenious Theuth, the
parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility
or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this
instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of
your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which
they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness
in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories;
they will trust to the external written characters and not remember
of themselves. The specific which you have discovered is an aid not to
memory, but to reminiscence, and you give your disciples not truth, but
only the semblance of truth; they will be hearers of many things and
will have learned nothing; they will appear to be omniscient and will
generally know nothing; they will be tiresome company, having the show
of wisdom without the reality.
PHAEDRUS: Yes, Socrates, you can easily invent tales of Egypt, or of any
other country.
SOCRATES: There was a tradition in the temple of Dodona that oaks first
gave prophetic utterances. The men of old, unlike in their simplicity to
young philosophy, deemed that if they heard the truth even from 'oak or
rock,' it was enough for them; whereas you seem to consider not whether
a thing is or is not true, but who the speaker is and from what country
the tale comes.
PHAEDRUS: I acknowledge the justice of your rebuke; and I think that the
Theban is right in his view about letters.
SOCRATES: He would be a very simple person, and quite a stranger to the
oracles of Thamus or Ammon, who should leave in writing or receive
in writing any art under the idea that the written word would be
intelligible or certain; or who deemed that writing was at all better
than knowledge and recollection of the same matters?
PHAEDRUS: That is most true.
SOCRATES: I cannot help feeling, Phaedrus, that writing is unfortunately
like painting; for the creations of the painter have the attitude of
life, and yet if you ask them a question they preserve a solemn silence.
And the same may be said of speeches. You would imagine that they had
intelligence, but if you want to know anything and put a question to one
of them, the speaker always gives one unvarying answer. And when they
have been once written down they are tumbled about anywhere among those
who may or may not understand them, and know not to whom they should
reply, to whom not: and, if they are maltreated or abused, they have no
parent to protect them; and they cannot protect or defend themselves.
PHAEDRUS: That again is most true.
SOCRATES: Is there not another kind of word or speech far better than
this, and having far greater power--a son of the same family, but
lawfully begotten?
PHAEDRUS: Whom do you mean, and what is his origin?
SOCRATES: I mean an intelligent word graven in the soul of the learner,
which can defend itself, and knows when to speak and when to be silent.
PHAEDRUS: You mean the living word of knowledge which has a soul, and of
which the written word is properly no more than an image?
SOCRATES: Yes, of course that is what I mean. And now may I be allowed
to ask you a question: Would a husbandman, who is a man of sense, take
the seeds, which he values and which he wishes to bear fruit, and in
sober seriousness plant them during the heat of summer, in some garden
of Adonis, that he may rejoice when he sees them in eight days appearing
in beauty? at least he would do so, if at all, only for the sake of
amusement and pastime. But when he is in earnest he sows in fitting
soil, and practises husbandry, and is satisfied if in eight months the
seeds which he has sown arrive at perfection?
PHAEDRUS: Yes, Socrates, that will be his way when he is in earnest; he
will do the other, as you say, only in play.
SOCRATES: And can we suppose that he who knows the just and good and
honourable has less understanding, than the husbandman, about his own
seeds?
PHAEDRUS: Certainly not.
SOCRATES: Then he will not seriously incline to 'write' his thoughts
'in water' with pen and ink, sowing words which can neither speak for
themselves nor teach the truth adequately to others?
PHAEDRUS: No, that is not likely.
SOCRATES: No, that is not likely--in the garden of letters he will sow
and plant, but only for the sake of recreation and amusement; he will
write them down as memorials to be treasured against the forgetfulness
of old age, by himself, or by any other old man who is treading the same
path. He will rejoice in beholding their tender growth; and while others
are refreshing their souls with banqueting and the like, this will be
the pastime in which his days are spent.
PHAEDRUS: A pastime, Socrates, as noble as the other is ignoble, the
pastime of a man who can be amused by serious talk, and can discourse
merrily about justice and the like.
SOCRATES: True, Phaedrus. But nobler far is the serious pursuit of the
dialectician, who, finding a congenial soul, by the help of science sows
and plants therein words which are able to help themselves and him who
planted them, and are not unfruitful, but have in them a seed which
others brought up in different soils render immortal, making the
possessors of it happy to the utmost extent of human happiness.
PHAEDRUS: Far nobler, certainly.
SOCRATES: And now, Phaedrus, having agreed upon the premises we may
decide about the conclusion.
PHAEDRUS: About what conclusion?
SOCRATES: About Lysias, whom we censured, and his art of writing, and
his discourses, and the rhetorical skill or want of skill which was
shown in them--these are the questions which we sought to determine, and
they brought us to this point. And I think that we are now pretty well
informed about the nature of art and its opposite.
PHAEDRUS: Yes, I think with you; but I wish that you would repeat what
was said.
SOCRATES: Until a man knows the truth of the several particulars of
which he is writing or speaking, and is able to define them as they are,
and having defined them again to divide them until they can be no longer
divided, and until in like manner he is able to discern the nature
of the soul, and discover the different modes of discourse which are
adapted to different natures, and to arrange and dispose them in such
a way that the simple form of speech may be addressed to the simpler
nature, and the complex and composite to the more complex nature--until
he has accomplished all this, he will be unable to handle arguments
according to rules of art, as far as their nature allows them to
be subjected to art, either for the purpose of teaching or
persuading;--such is the view which is implied in the whole preceding
argument.
PHAEDRUS: Yes, that was our view, certainly.
SOCRATES: Secondly, as to the censure which was passed on the speaking
or writing of discourses, and how they might be rightly or wrongly
censured--did not our previous argument show--?
PHAEDRUS: Show what?
SOCRATES: That whether Lysias or any other writer that ever was or will
be, whether private man or statesman, proposes laws and so becomes
the author of a political treatise, fancying that there is any great
certainty and clearness in his performance, the fact of his so writing
is only a disgrace to him, whatever men may say. For not to know the
nature of justice and injustice, and good and evil, and not to be able
to distinguish the dream from the reality, cannot in truth be otherwise
than disgraceful to him, even though he have the applause of the whole
world.
PHAEDRUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: But he who thinks that in the written word there is
necessarily much which is not serious, and that neither poetry
nor prose, spoken or written, is of any great value, if, like the
compositions of the rhapsodes, they are only recited in order to be
believed, and not with any view to criticism or instruction; and who
thinks that even the best of writings are but a reminiscence of what we
know, and that only in principles of justice and goodness and nobility
taught and communicated orally for the sake of instruction and graven
in the soul, which is the true way of writing, is there clearness and
perfection and seriousness, and that such principles are a man's own and
his legitimate offspring;--being, in the first place, the word which
he finds in his own bosom; secondly, the brethren and descendants and
relations of his idea which have been duly implanted by him in the souls
of others;--and who cares for them and no others--this is the right sort
of man; and you and I, Phaedrus, would pray that we may become like him.
PHAEDRUS: That is most assuredly my desire and prayer.
SOCRATES: And now the play is played out; and of rhetoric enough. Go and
tell Lysias that to the fountain and school of the Nymphs we went
down, and were bidden by them to convey a message to him and to other
composers of speeches--to Homer and other writers of poems, whether set
to music or not; and to Solon and others who have composed writings in
the form of political discourses which they would term laws--to all of
them we are to say that if their compositions are based on knowledge of
the truth, and they can defend or prove them, when they are put to the
test, by spoken arguments, which leave their writings poor in
comparison of them, then they are to be called, not only poets, orators,
legislators, but are worthy of a higher name, befitting the serious
pursuit of their life.
PHAEDRUS: What name would you assign to them?
SOCRATES: Wise, I may not call them; for that is a great name which
belongs to God alone,--lovers of wisdom or philosophers is their modest
and befitting title.
PHAEDRUS: Very suitable.
SOCRATES: And he who cannot rise above his own compilations and
compositions, which he has been long patching and piecing, adding some
and taking away some, may be justly called poet or speech-maker or
law-maker.
PHAEDRUS: Certainly.
SOCRATES: Now go and tell this to your companion.
PHAEDRUS: But there is also a friend of yours who ought not to be
forgotten.
SOCRATES: Who is he?
PHAEDRUS: Isocrates the fair:--What message will you send to him, and
how shall we describe him?
SOCRATES: Isocrates is still young, Phaedrus; but I am willing to hazard
a prophecy concerning him.
PHAEDRUS: What would you prophesy?
SOCRATES: I think that he has a genius which soars above the orations of
Lysias, and that his character is cast in a finer mould. My impression
of him is that he will marvellously improve as he grows older, and that
all former rhetoricians will be as children in comparison of him. And I
believe that he will not be satisfied with rhetoric, but that there is
in him a divine inspiration which will lead him to things higher still.
For he has an element of philosophy in his nature. This is the message
of the gods dwelling in this place, and which I will myself deliver to
Isocrates, who is my delight; and do you give the other to Lysias, who
is yours.
PHAEDRUS: I will; and now as the heat is abated let us depart.
SOCRATES: Should we not offer up a prayer first of all to the local
deities?
PHAEDRUS: By all means.
SOCRATES: Beloved Pan, and all ye other gods who haunt this place, give
me beauty in the inward soul; and may the outward and inward man be
at one. May I reckon the wise to be the wealthy, and may I have such
a quantity of gold as a temperate man and he only can bear and
carry.--Anything more? The prayer, I think, is enough for me.
PHAEDRUS: Ask the same for me, for friends should have all things in
common.
SOCRATES: Let us go.